


Stairway to the Light

by Rose Argent (roseargent)



Category: Vagrant Story
Genre: Blood Magic, Gen, Ghosts, M/M, Moving On, POV Outsider, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:41:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24488395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseargent/pseuds/Rose%20Argent
Summary: In the days following the fall of Leá Monde, Samantha haunts Ashley, and Ashley plans something that disconcerts even Sydney.
Relationships: Sydney Losstarot/Ashley Riot
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7





	Stairway to the Light

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be an Outsider POV fic about Sydney and Ashley. There's still some of that, but mostly it turned into Samantha's story, instead. 
> 
> I didn't tag for it because it's very brief, but Samantha does at one point end up in Ashley's head while he's with Sydney, and none of them precisely consent to this moment of resonance.

From time to time Samantha wondered if it was more often the case that the living haunted the dead, or if it was a thing particular only to her. She lingered in his shadow but, though he saw many ghosts in the days following Leá Monde's fall, he did not see her. Betimes something called to her, faintly, fleetingly, urging her elsewhere, but her eyes remained fixed on his back, on the Rood writ there in crimson. Romeo had worn it once, a dying man's stolen skin; it sat more easily on this back.

She could not always see the Dark, but she saw it now, curling around him like a contented cat. It loved him, as it had not loved Romeo. The Dark was wiser than she was, chose better than she had, and perhaps that was the reason it had spat her soul out and left her to trail along behind him like the lost thing she had always been. Or perhaps she had simply come loose in the chaos of Leá Monde's collapse and she only imagined that the Dark could be bothered to reject her a-purpose.

The night sky was dull with clouds, reflecting the lights of the city below; she could not see the stars. He stood on the edge of the roof, illusions laid over him like shadow. Though the street below was not empty even at this late hour, few of the passers-by looked up. She had wondered at his caution, but she saw now that those who did look up did so with a sharp jerk of the head, as though stung and seeking the source of the pain. Every last one of them wore Church colours, sorcerers one and all, though none with the power to pierce his concealments. In the distance, the Cathedral loomed. Within, she imagined the Cardinal slept the deep, satisfied sleep of the wicked. Or did he sense, somehow, the eyes of the Dark's master upon him?

As he had many times before, he left his perch as the sun began to rise, retuning to the little garret he had rented. She lingered for a moment, watching as the Cathedral came aglow in the light of the dawn. It was beautiful, and she remembered the first time she had seen it so--she had thought it a beacon of purity, of all that was good in the world. 

"Do you still long for the shepherd's crook, little sheep?"

Samantha closed her eyes against the light as it became dazzling, blinding, the world tilting on its axis around her. When she opened them again, Sydney stood beside her, though a Sydney that appeared to lose solidity at the edges. "I find I have little and less patience for your needling, having already tasted the butcher's knife."

Sydney spread his clawed hands, narrow shoulders rising in a shrug. Wisps of him seemed to peel off and vanish into the air, and for a mere instant Samantha saw only the roiling Dark, trying to hold the semblance of a person. "You could have been long since out of reach of my needling, as you say. Yet here you remain."

So she did. And why? A question she had avoiding pondering overmuch, and was that not precisely the sort of question Sydney would have seized upon? A fragment of the Dark this spectre might be, but perhaps it was Sydney, too. She owed him no answers, yet... it seemed to her now that he had almost tried to help her, in his own sharp way, and she had been too naive to listen, then. "Our rhythms were once attuned, so that he saw through my eyes and I through his. Yet we are little enough alike. I would know what it means."

"Little alike?" Sydney's smile, so full of secrets, flickered across his face for but a moment. "Well, linger, then, as you like. You may have your answer in time."

***

At first, she had thought that he only wandered to stay ahead of his pursuers, but time and again he returned to the cities, to the heart of his enemies' power. He haunted the very halls of Parliament, and none had the eyes to see him. The Cathedral he gave a wider berth, though he circled ever closer, testing, ever testing the limits of the Cardinal's sorcerers. He did not flee, he did not drift aimlessly--he stalked his prey, mapping their territories like the most patient of hunters. 

When he slept, she slept, or something very like it. She remained always outside the door of his rooms. Was it foolish, to cling to propriety now? What harm would it do to sate her curiosity? Infidelity would be the least of her sins, and no vows bound her beyond death, in any case. But some nights she heard voices through the thin walls, and knew one for Sydney's. She could close her ears to the words, but the tones were low and unmistakably intimate. 

Fragments of Kildean writings began to find their way into his possession, along with more mundane intelligence. She could not imagine when he was making such contacts without her noticing, but she had never had the temperament for shadow work. She could not read the Kildean writing, and was surprised to find that he could. It could only be the power of the Dark that gave him such facility, but relying on it in such a way... she would not chance it, in his place. Sydney told lies with the truth, could the Dark be trusted not to do the same in the service of its own alien desires?

His travels became more visibly purposeful, after a time. He pursued those bits and pieces of ancient lore with a focus, an intensity, that seemed almost madness. The private conversations with Sydney grew heated, in anger and in... other things... until Samantha could no longer pretend not to listen if she remained there at the threshold. She spent her days on the rooftops thereafter, drifting in and out of what she still preferred to call "sleep," glad though she was that it was a dreamless emptiness unlike any true sleep she'd ever known.

Eventually, as she knew he must, Sydney came to her again. This time there was little to him--the mere suggestion of his shape, and hardly any taste of the Dark lingering about him. Almost, he was as she was. He was silent, for longer than she had ever known him to be. Well, and how much had she really known him? 

"Ashley cannot be diverted from this path," he said at last. 

"Slipped his jesses, has he?" If only she could find satisfaction in the failure of Sydney's manipulations, but she could feel only gnawing dread. 

Sydney's insubstantial lips twisted into a wry sort of smile, the mockery turned at himself for a change. "I named him hunter, but the blasted fool is a _hound_."

She could not smile at the comparison. A half-grown, starveling pup would not hesitate to face a dragon for its master, knowing it for hopeless. "And if it goes wrong?" 

"Then you will stop him."

"Me? Surely you jest." Samantha looked down at her own hand, faint even to her own sight. She could not stop anything while she lived, and there was so much less of her now. "And if it goes right? What then?"

"You can only see if you open your eyes." And with that, he was gone.

***

He'd gone farther from the cities than he ever did, until even the small towns petered out and the stars flooded the sky. A thousand thousand icy points of light glittered down upon them. She had never seen such a sky, not even in Leá Monde. 

They were well into the mountains by the dark of the moon, and Samantha wondered if there was another soul about for miles. Some shepherd with his flock, perhaps, or a miner desperate enough to seek the scraps left from veins of ore long played out. Something in the pit of her stomach unknotted, a pressure easing. Whatever he was attempting, however wrong it went, there would be no second Leá Monde, no city of the dead.

She watched as he scratched Kildean letters into a flat place in the stone, made circles and whorls that seemed to draw in the night. The power built, lending a heaviness to the air. No, not only the air; Samantha brushed her fingers against the trunk of a tree, feeling the roughness of bark beneath her skin. The wonder of it froze her for a moment, and then a new fear seized her. He might _see_ her! She ducked behind the great tree, heart pounding in her chest like a living thing. 

Moments passed, and she dared to look out from behind her tree. He was absorbed in the ritual preparations yet, he had not seen. Beside him, just outside the loops of the great spell, Sydney stood watching. He was as solid as she, and he glanced in her direction, head canted in an unspoken question. She shook her head in answer, and pulled back behind the tree again. Curse the man and his cryptic nonsense! Solid she might be, but unarmed and out of practice what hope did she have of stopping a VKP Riskbreaker steeped in the power of the Dark?

The sound of steel on stone ceased, the power in the air grown thick as storm clouds, heavy with lightning. 

Carefully, she looked out from behind the tree once again. He stood in the centre of the magic circle, hand extended to Sydney. Metal clasped flesh, and as Sydney stepped into the circle bright drops of blood fell. When they hit, the storm broke. There was thunder, a roaring in her ears, so that she could not hear the words he spoke, the replies Sydney gave. Those fierce metal claws cupped a flesh-and-blood cheek, so careful, so gentle that she could scarce credit it.

They kissed, and she wanted to look away but could not make herself turn her head. They were incandescent--with power, yes, but with something else, too. Clothes were discarded--or burned away in the magic, for one moment they were there and the next gone. The Rood blazed crimson, he knelt before Sydney as a worshipper before God, and she could find no blasphemy in it. Again, again those deadly hands touched his face, as Sydney looked down at him in something like wonder.

Romeo had never looked at her so.

She was transfixed as they made love; it was fierce and ugly and beautiful, and the magic crackled around them, lashing their skin with fire that did not burn.

Her vision lurched, and she looked up at Sydney through his eyes. She felt his startlement as he registered her presence, and then he was lost in the magic once more. She was with him still in the moment when his life tore in two. She heard her own voice cry out, at once from within and without, and distantly felt the wetness of tears on her cheeks even as she felt Sydney's heart begin to beat beneath his hands.

His eyes closed, and she was flung free, alone in her own mind once more. Her hands were at her mouth, as if to hold in the scream. She wept, and fell to her knees. "Oh, Ashley, what have you done?"

Sydney looked at her, tired and pale but very much alive. "You have the eyes to see. Only look."

And so she did. He--Ashley--breathed still, though he did not stir. The Dark coiled around him, protective now, but thin and threadbare. It coiled around Sydney, too, in tentative wisps. "He gave you half. Half the Dark, half his very life."

There had been no sadness in Ashley, no shock of betrayal. What had been taken from her, he had freely given. Had Romeo trusted her, had he needed her, she would have given as much, or more; she would have given him everything, if he had been the man she thought he was. 

She had believed wrongly, but she had believed. It could have been beautiful, had he the heart to make it so--that he did not was no stain on her soul. And, so, she let him go. He deserved not one more moment of her grief.

The stars wheeled above her, their light crisp and bright again as her tears dried and her vision cleared. Her anger fell away, and she gasped at the surcease of pain. The weight of her sins was nothing against the pull she had ignored so long, only her unspoken rage had held her down. The stars came down, or she rose to meet them, and it was not what she had feared. Their light--not cold at all, but warm, so warm--embraced her, and she closed her eyes. 

***

Sydney's legs made for a poor pillow, but their solidity beneath Ashley's head was welcome enough that he scarcely felt the bruises. 

Ashley glanced at the tree that had so recently concealed Samantha, but he could find no trace of her now. A weakness in him, having given so much of the Dark away this night? Or was there no longer anything there to see? He hoped and feared that it was the latter. He probed at the Dark warily, but found no trace of her there. Only now did he wonder that he never had. To his shame, he had never thought to look. 

"She tasted of you. The Dark would not have taken her while you live." Claws scraped against stone as Sydney leaned back on his hands, his eyes fixed on the stars. "Wherever she has gone, it is nowhere we will ever see."

Attuned. They had been so, once, and Ashley had thought it only one oddity of many in that time of madness--one he had paid scarcely any thought since that night, so consumed was he by the Dark and by his own need. Perhaps she had deserved better of him, but there was no room in his heart for regrets now.

He turned to face Sydney, hands braced to either side of pale, narrow hips. He could feel Sydney's breath upon his lips, but made no move to close the distance between them. The Dark rose up around him, the half that was now Sydney's reaching eagerly for the half he retained; he could feel a sort of wonder in it, surprise and delight at this new thing that had been made of it.

Later, perhaps, he would think of Sydney's warnings, of the consequences of this night's work. Now, he had Sydney before him, whole and perfect. Tasting Sydney's lips, he felt the other man's attention fall fully on him. The stars were bright above them, but they paid them no more mind--they were creatures of the Dark and the Earth, for as long as one fragile life could sustain them.

-fin-


End file.
